You had never seen kale before
it looked like large cabbage plants
reaching skyward
so that you could hide in it

and not be seen
from the farm
and Jane walked
with you there

and you both sat there talking
she about her father
and how he prepared
his Sunday sermons

right after the one given
on the previous Sunday
and how he liked
to close himself away

from the family
for hours at a time
with just his Bible
and other books

and God of course
and get it down
and afterwards
polish it up

until he had it off to pat
and you listened to her
trying to imagine
what it must be like

to have a father
who was a pastor
and you'd met her father
a few times

and her mother more
(and was told
she liked you)
and tried to think

about what her father's sermons
were about
(you never went
to the services)

and as she sat there
with her flowery dress
red and yellow
and those white ankle socks

and walking-about
-the-farmland-shoes
and dark hair
tied at that moment

with a red ribbon
you noticed
how beautiful she was
in her own way plain way

and how her hands
were held together
over her knees
as she raised her legs

and how the sun light
still reached
you both there
in the kale

and warmed
and eased you both
and you talked
of London

and when you left
and why
and how so different it was
and how you could walk

to at least to two cinemas
whereas here
there was none
but that you didn't mind

as it was a new life
and next to nature
and you could learn
new things kind of life now

and she smiled
and that thrilled you
that smile
that spread of lips

that pierce your heart
and mind kind of smile
and her wrists
slim and white

and the fingers
thin and white
and the nails
had white half moons

on them
and you wanted
to sit there
with her forever

in the tall kale
with the bright sun
and secret love
and feel inside

and 13 year old
sensibilities
each wanting to touch
but not at least not much

and she pointed out
a Red Admiral butterfly
fluttering over the kale
and slowly by.

I have been in love with you since the moment
I realized we could sit in silence and eat a meal

Neither struggled for words or reason.

We just,
Sat alone in a booth, together.

My hand bumping yours , my eyes
Are locked on the freckle on your neck,





Loving you, loving her, while she loves him and
We sit in this triangle wishing for someone else.




Please hold my hand, like the nights we walk together late at night,
Those fleeting moments when I’m the girl you love.
Before you throw our feelings back into the dark.



Darling, I will always love those moments

When you’re body stopped me from

rolling out of bed.

And I wake up in the morning to your imprint in the sheets.

my fingers, the same fingers
that played the guitar  
I mean look at your fingers,
the same fingers you licked
after getting the sticky pale red juice
from a cherry popsicle on them  
my fingers were dug into the tall grass
my mouth, the same mouth I kissed Amelia with,
the same mouth I ate hamburgers with,  
was pressed against the ground so tight
mud was getting stuck in my teeth
and my ears, the same ears
that heard my first sounds
were filled with colored noise, with black noise
with screaming from people I thought I knew
and those mortar and AK 47 rounds that came as fast as hail stones
and then those same ears started ringing,
but ringing is not the right ******* word
because it doesn’t sound like school bells
or phones you are eager to answer
and I can’t describe what is sounds like
and anybody who does wasn’t really there
but it is easy to say 45 years later it was
like something you knew, but you didn’t know
whatever it is you knew, and contradictions
are imperatives and declaratives, not interrogatives  
like the people of “the world” think they are  
and people of the world are filled with interrogatives
and you are filled with answers
that won’t come to your tongue
because you are still spitting out the ****
from the rice paddies and the lies you needed  
to keep you from sticking the barrel
in your own mouth, but they, those who weren’t there  
wanted to believe even more than you  
so they could still look at you without thinking
the blood on your hands, the blood coming from your lost limbs
the blood oozing into the mire in some script
the dead donor did not know--all that blood
could not be spilled in vain, though you knew it meant little
when you rinsed it from you boots,
or even when splattered in your face  
the same face that smiled for the little gray square
in the year book eighteen months before      
or maybe a million years ago
in the land of affluent aphorisms
and fingers on bra straps
rather than the rock and roll auto switch of your M-16
the fingers, the same fingers
that squeezed the trigger  
and killed something inside you
while the rounds sliced the exploding stinking air  
you were happy to silently breathe

Over the heads of 3am stoplight dancers
through the viney brick pub where Verily
bleaches the bar-tops by beersign fluorescents,
past the last streetlight to blink off where Hope
is marching brisk-ly through the muddy dark,
under the first confused crimson leaf to fall of autumn
with not an eye to see,
upon the sill where Early leans/
checks the time and sighs smoke behind the window,
through the Oaken Chapel doors where young Clöse
writes his first sermon and cries,
out in the alfalfa field where the fireflies whish
and Sol says goodbye to them again
hoping one day they’d take him too.

Beyond the yellow hill
Where the homeless sleep alone,
Illumination strikes the lens white
And they are new.

he slammed his cup on the counter  
not to get anyone’s attention
though his cup was empty  
I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes  
of course they were bloodshot  
and of course he stank of nicotine
and of truth that he said could not be found
in the bottom of that coffee cup or bottle of gin  
though he ****** up both  like…
hell, I can’t compare it to anything  
and he would think a simile was a waste of words
he told me of a lover he once had, Elisa  
with hair so long she sat on it  
and a thirst as ravenous as his  
which led her to an alley in South Chicago
where the ***** or the H put her to sleep
for good, and how he buried her in Peoria
in a hard freeze, beside her brother
who got killed in Phu Bai, by “friendly fire”
but Bukowski laughed through his tears
when he heard that ****, “friendly fire”
and he filled his glass again,
with Bourbon I guess--I wasn’t at  Elisa’s
numb mother’s house that day
and when he lost another ****** lover
to a drunk driver, he didn’t say anything about irony  
just said, ****, it hurts to be close  
and he didn’t trust this happiness ****
because it didn’t last, but pain, hell,
you can count on that ******* and if he leaves,
you can make some up on your own…  
the waitress filled our cups to the top
so there was no space for the cream  
I sipped slowly to make room
he took a swig that had to scald his tongue
but I could not tell, for he was already on the death
of lover number three, sitting there with me  
waiting for him to stop the foul flow of truth